beaches (1)

you frown in your beautiful portrait,
seeming dead way ahead of time,
in your weak blue oval of enamel sky.
what’s wrong, my little peach?
tonight a wolf’s eyes will glow violet
in a forest you’ll never see
in a place you can’t know. is that it?
and, somewhere, is a whole beach
made of glass pebbles you will never
lie down on, nor will your skin reflect
its blue, green, white, and burn.

About this poem

Rebecca Perry’s pamphlet, little armoured (Seren, 2012), won the Poetry Wales Purple Moose prize and was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Her first full collection, Beauty/Beauty (Bloodaxe, 2015), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and shortlisted for the Fenton Aldeburgh Prize for Best First Collection and the T.S. Eliot Prize. Rebecca is co-editor of the online journal Poems In Which and will be Writer Fellow at Manchester University in 2016.